Friday, October 12, 2012

Superheroes Year One: G+ Investigation Session

SESSION NINE: A COLD CALL FOR HELPIn the aftermath of the Bridge attack, the group moved to check and make sure everything had been handled safely and locked down. Nightcrawler and Mister Freeze confirmed that they’d managed to avert the worst of the dangers. They checked the location which Team Furies had excavated on the bridge. There they located a stone chamber which had been sealed up. It had some strange energies, occult markings, and a star-like symbol cracked on the main wall. Thor and Iron Man flew to the other bridges to confirm that they’d managed to deal with their situation. On the Hell’s Gate Bridge, Thor spoke with Ms. Marvel- though The Question who was there vanished into the crowd during this. Marvel confirmed that they’d taken down the Wrecking Crew, including Bulldozer, Piledriver, Thunderball, and the Wrecker. The Wrecker had broken into a chamber on the bridge which turned out to be nearly identical to the one on the Yancy Street bridge. Marvel took off to haul the bad guys to The Raft and check in with STAR Labs.

Iron Man and Sarge Steel spoke with the other team on the Kirby Avenue- Yes Man, El Diablo, and Moon Knight. They saw The Engineer take off as they approached- apparently in response to their arrival. Iron Man spoke with Moon Knight but found him a little off- contrary to Yes Man’s description of him. The Kirby Street bridge had also been the target of an “excavation” but no evidences remained of it. The bad guys, made up of Heat Wave, The Top, Weather Wizard, and Captain Boomerang had attacked the location. Boomerang blasted his way into the chamber, at which point El Diablo through some kind of alchemical solvent which killed the supervillain and melted the stone. Iron Man had a brief confrontation with el Diablo on this. Sarge Steel took a slightly different tactic with him, alluding to greater threats the heroes faced. They exchanged contact info and Steel put a tracer on the dangerous hero.

Meanwhile, Mister Miracle spoke to “The Medic”, a member of Team Furies. She confirmed that their team had been recruited and equipped by Granny Goodness, but that Granny had vanished a few weeks before- just after setting up the attack on Miracle using Mysterio. Since that time, the Furies had been looking for freelance opportunities. They’d been contacted by the reliable fixer, The Lynx. She’d told them that there was a powerful weapon or weapon cache at the site on the bridge. The Penguin wanted it- so the Furies could sell it to him or on the open market. The Lynx had indicated that the op had to be done quickly. The group would later confirmed that the same thing had been told to the other supervillain groups- looking more like the Lynx had set people up.

The Medic also said that Fury who had opened the chamber had become seriously ill and needed immediate medical attention. Miracle looked the other way as the Furies’ Medic took off, now in his debt. Mister Freeze checked out the sick supervillain and confirmed the diagnosis. Both she and the Wrecker, who had opened the chambers, had been hit by a sudden release of strange energy. It seemed to be killing them. Freeze used his skills to put both in suspended animation. The team spoke with de Wolfe who gave them carte blanche to carry on all of their investigations- and to take the two sick villains with them. She encouraged them to get moving before Zeigler, the DHS, and STAR Labs showed up to locked down the scenes.

At this point the group assembled a number of facts and responses:

The Villains were suffering a kind of unconventional energy poisoning. The sites were not magically radioactive now, but opening the chambers had apparently activated the release. That energy was different from that of the Magus Gem the group had recovered.

Iron Man built two devices- one to protect the PCs in case of another blast of that kind of energy. It would act as a one-shot buffer. He also built a tracker which would allow them to detect that energy close by.

Sarge Steel made contact with Heather North to recruit her.

The team looked at the occult sygils in the chambers and the locations of the attacks. They formed a pattern- a pentagram. The fifth point of that had not been attack and there was no bridge in that location. Nightcrawler and Sarge Steel headed out to check the location.

Iron Man spoke with his Russian fixer contact. She confirmed that the Lynx was a criminal networker. However, the Lynx had apparently pissed off the Penguin with her activities the previous evening. She had vanished from her offices- and the Penguin was apparently hunting for her. However, the indications suggested that the Lynx had not gone voluntarily but had been taken by a third party. The group didn’t have a chance to check the scene yet, since it had been clearer by the Lynx’s staff.

The bridges had been built at different times, but each had had a set of renovations in the late 1960’s at around the same time. The chambers had apparently been installed secretly at that time.

Thor spoke briefly with the Executioner. Scourge revealed that he’d come here with the Enchantress. She’d met with the Black Knight, aka Nathan Garett, to obtain a trident in his possession. The Black Knight had escaped Firstwave at the museum earlier. As far as the Executioner knew, the Enchantress wanted this item to bargain with a powerful force or sorcerer her on this world. She’d gone to meet with that mysterious figure but hadn’t returned. Scourge had stayed to work with the Black Knight in hopes of learning something further. He’d also spoken with Loki who’d been sent by Odin to find and return the Enchantress.

Armed with information the group moved in a couple of different directions.

Sarge Steel and Nightcrawler headed to the fifth site to check it out. There they found a set off tunnels- seemingly more recently dug. They headed down in and found a network which eventually led to an older area, complete with worked stone walls. Suddenly they found themselves confronted by Mole Man and his servants. He challenged the heroes and asked why they’d penetrated his domain. Nightcrawler, with a less human appearance, managed to convince him of their good intentions. Kurt asked about a stone chamber. Mole Man confirmed that one was nearby and showed it to them. It was an older creation, part of a ward which the Mole Men protected. The other four sections of the ward had been moved by a sorcerer years earlier. When told that the other four sections of the ward had been broken, Mole Man grew concerned and said he would gather his people here near the remaining site. That would offer a measure of protection when the old destroyer came forth and conquered the surface world.

Mister Miracle and Thor arranged an appointment with Franklin Glass, freelance occultist. He didn’t exactly measure up to their expectations, not being a practicing magus but more of a scholar. He was able to provide them with some information. He identified the symbols and materials recovered from Davion Kingdom and his people as being associated with Lemurian Magic, otherwise known as Atlantaen Sorcery. He talked of the fall of Lemuria, with its fish or serpent-like denizens in the ancient past. They’d worshipped a horrible aquatic god who had allowed them to conquer the world. Then the gods had struck the Empire down and sunk Atlantis beneath the seas. The chambers seemed to be part of a warding spell tied to prevent Atlantaen workings. The energies killing the villains was a form of protection.

Glass examined the green crystal Magus Stone, but wasn’t sure about it. He suggested speaking with the LexCorp people who had worked with it, including the guy who hired Stretch Jackson. They also checked on who had overseen the alterations to the bridges years before, and got a name: Dr. Stephen Strange. Glass filled them in on other aspects of the Atlantis myth, suggesting that when the city rose it could appear anywhere since it was magic. The azure masked figures spotted in various images before were servants of the dread lord. When the stars would be right, the Awakener would raise up and awaken his dark, conquering master who waited in his house dreaming as aeons passed. Who or what the Awakener was remained uncertain, but it seemed to be tied to the phrase, the last son of Lemuria. After consultation, Glass suggested that Kingdom might have been receiving transmissions from a magical visualizer. When he sketched out the device, Miracle and Thor recognized it as being similar to a device in Fenton’s base. That clearly wasn’t the one being used to compel Kingdom- instead Glass believed that if he could gain access to it, he might be able to track the signals.

Iron Man followed up with an earlier contact, Dr. Ularia Spica. He asked if she could get him access to Fenton’s devices held by STAR Labs. She said it was risky- she wasn’t even supposed to know about them. She would have to check which devices were site on the main site and which had been shipped out to STAR Labs’ oceanographic institute off-shore. She called Stark back a short while later and told him to meet here at a location in an hour. When the team arrived, they found a panel van with the device inside, but no sign of the scientist.

Firstwave had many leads to follow up on, but a call brought them up short. Mr. Freeze received a call on his private line. It was his nemesis, the Penguin. “Mr. Freeze…I want to come in from the cold.”

A MIRACLE IN COURT

Mister Miracle's player also put together the following new article between sessions:

The performer turned "SuperHero" Scott Free, better known as Mister Miracle, courted controversy again yesterday when he unexpectedly appeared at the arraignment of the powered criminals known as Team Furies. The Furies, who just a short time earlier had been taken into custody by Free and his colleagues in the adventurer's group Firstwave, were in court for their part in the recent terrorist attack against New York City's bridges.

What should have been a routine proceeding was interrupted when Free and celebrity civil rights attorney Ron Kuby entered the court room and announced that they would be providing counsel for Team Furies. Kuby laid forth the theory that the young women were acting under the influence of extra-dimensional aliens, and as such, bore no responsibility for their actions in the terror attack. He entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mind control, and asked the court to release the defendants to the supervision of Free,confined to his estate in Montclair, NJ pending the trial.

As evidence to support his untested legal theory, Kuby pointed to the clearly alien nature of the weapons that the women employed in the attack. He called Free as an expert witness on the nature of the devices and the subject of alien mind control. Free, under oath, identified the technology as being as that of his homeworld, and testified that it did not operate according to the understood principles of human science, but was powered by something more akin to a "psycho-cosmic Feng shui".

He went on to claim that he was the familiar with the alien that was responsible for the subversion of Team Furies' wills, and that he was certain that mind control was not beyond her capabilities. He stated that such technology was common among his people, and that influencing the mind of a human would be elementary. When pressed to provide evidence of this, Free, in the most controversial moment of the hearing, offered to demonstrate and, before a wildly gesticulating Kuby could stop him, used the alien technology that he had snuck into the courtroom to "love at" the judge and prosecutor. A tinny "PiNg pInG PiNg" sound filled the room, and the court officials were visibly overwhelmed for a moment.The clearly disoriented and disturbed judge called for an adjournment and cleared the court.

A preliminary ruling is expected within the week ,possibly as soon as today.Reactions to the spectacle were varied. G. Gordon Godfrey saw Free's testimony as vindication of his conspiracy theories, and took to the air demanding INS begin deportation proceedings. Further, playing on rumors of the prosecutor's displeasure, Godfrey insisted that the use of powers in a courtroom in itself constituted a terrorist attack. He said of his former partner, Godfrey and Kuby had a short lived cable television debate show on MSNBC a few years ago, " this portly, pony tailed, pusillanimous poofter should be disbarred and tried for traitorously selling out America to this alien menace."

Shiloh Norman, proprietor of the meta human news site SuperDooperBlog, commented that this event substantiates rumors about Miracle that had been floating through the community for some time. "There's always been chatter that Mister Miracle is more than just a super-cop. This goes back to his first public confrontation with Mysterio, where the forums lit up with reports, which we were never able to confirm, that Free had been visiting his foe in prison."

Attempts to contact representatives of Firstwave, Stark Industries and MisterFreeze.com for comment had not yet received responses by press time.